Iran criticises UN report as ‘politically-motivated’

Tehran: Iran on Wednesday dismissed a recent report by the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Tehran, Ahmed Shaheed, as “politically-motivated”, Tasnim news agency reported on Wednesday.

“We believe that the content of the rapporteur’s report on Iran is biased and has been prepared with the political intents,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said reacting to Shaheed’s latest report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Shaheed’s report has been made on the basis of unauthentic information rather than the realities on the ground, Jaber Ansari said.

Such approaches not only fail to improve the status of human rights in the world, but also downgrade the issue to the level of political disputes among the countries, he said.

Iran is committed to promoting human rights according to its own constitution and religious values, he added.

In his latest report on human rights condition in Iran, Shaheed said the Islamic republic was engaged in several human rights abuses in 2015, including the rise in the number of executions, as well as crackdowns on journalists and activists.

Iran has dismissed several times the reports by the UN human rights institutions, saying that they did not reflect the realities in the country.